In order to encourage all industries to apply smart technology, overturn the traditional education frame, and become the best cloud support, the Startup Terrace of SMEA, Kaohsiung City Government, BenQ, AWS Joint Innovation Center, and MetaAge cooperated and held a smart education startup recruiting project championship called "Gathering at Kaohsiung Startup Terrace for Future Education". The quarterfinal was held at the Startup Terrace on the 17th. Surreal Corporation finally won the championship and a prize of NT$200,000 after an intense competition.
The Smart Education Championship was won by Surreal with a prize of NT$200,000. The second place was won by Kdan Mobile with a prize of NT$ 100,000 while Uniigym with a prize of NT$80,000 as third place.
Photo: Lee, Fu-Chung
The champion, Surreal Corporation, is already at the top of VR innovation development. It is committed to building a brand new learning style through virtual reality and promotes a simultaneous two-way educational platform and educational service with interacting experience.
The second place was won by Kdan Mobile with a prize of NT$100,000 while Uniigym with a prize of NT$80,000 as third place. The top three will receive rich resources of cloud technique consultation and jointly developed overseas markets of BenQ education interactive touch monitor, so startup teams of education technology can start from Kaohsiung and do business with the world through cloud computing.
Judges, VIPs, and participants of the quarterfinal.
Photo: Lee, Fu-Chung
The championship attracted startup companies and schools to participate. The organizer invited representatives from industry, official, university, and startup company to be the judges, including President of BenQ Taiwan, Steve Yang; AWS Senior Director, Lin, Yuan-Chi; Director of SMEA, Ho, Chin-Tsang; Deputy Director of Kaohsiung City Education Bureau, Chen, Pei-Ru; Kaohsiung University EMBA Executive Management Training Center, Professor Weng, Ming-Jang; and President of Common Wealth Parenting Product Business Group, Yu, Yu-Hsueh.
Participating team were presenting and showing their advantages on product development during the competition to win the favor of the judges.
Photo: Lee, Fu-Chung
The 8 teams in the quarterfinal were outstanding and made the competition intense. The teams are Uniigym which is known as the Netflix in the workout industry; Kdan Mobile whose product had accumulated 200 million downloads worldwide; Flying Crazyer, an AI consulting system builder, whose Goer Technology was applied by over 300 Go Association in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, and China; Studycat Studios that design mobile language learning games for kids; EZ-AI that apply voice recognition onto English education; Surreal that build interactive VR courses, Yang Hang Tech that can help educators transfer all their work onto the internet.
The participating teams were receiving questions from judges.
Photo: Lee, Fu-Chung
The judges agreed that every participant can be the cloud supporting team that can overturn the education status and was hard to come up with a conclusion. President of BenQ Taiwan, Steve Yan, said, this activity is just a start. He hoped to have more opportunities for further discussions with all the teams and was glad to see many teams are already making their way to the overseas market. Ho, Chin-Tsang, Director of SMEA, said, the startup teams of Taiwan are as good as teams from other countries and have the ambition and faith to get into the global market. He expected to find more cooperation plans between startup companies and indicator companies, such as AWS, BenQ, after this competition.
The championship attracted startup companies and schools to join and interact with the participating teams.
Photo: Lee, Fu-Chung
Vice President of MetaAge Business Development Center, Steven Chu, said, the company will promote cooperation between AWS, BenQ, and the awarded team through this AWS Joint Innovation Center Program. We also welcome universities, venture capitals, or enterprises that are interested in the services provided by the quarterfinal teams to contact the organizer for further cooperation. Let's open up the possibility of digital education and apply more innovative technology to education.